Lest We Forget...

Long Black Line

Spencer Bohren

everywhere you look
everywhere you go
you read it like a book
it's the only way to know
how high the water got
august twenty-nine
that hurricane last summer
left a long black line

sometimes it's to your ankles
sometimes to your knees
sometimes it's to your chest or head
or up above the eaves
water filled with chemicals
water filled with gas
water spillin' everywhere
a city under glass
water laced with poison
god knows, of every kind
you don't want to know
what's in the long black line

you can go to church
confessin' all your sins
you can tell your brothers
'bout the shape this world is in
you could tell your sisters
judgement day is come
he's dealin' with the devil
he's thinnin' out the scum
this one it was water
fire comes next time
all of this is written
in the long black line

i will never leave this place
you hear some people say
then there's the ones
who just can't hardly wait to get away
lots of others have no choice
they're livin' in a void
their house is wrecked, their job is gone
their lives have been destroyed
the people comin' back
no tellin' what they'll find
one thing will be waitin' there
the long black line

drivin' on the highway
you go too fast to tell
but get down in the lower nine
it's like a walk through hell
out along the curb
it's everything we own
we sacrificed our every lives
to this mighty storm
beautiful new orleans
oh, she was so fine
now everywhere you go
there's just the long black line

the long black line
the long black line
the long black line
the long black line

some people say the sinners
brought it on themselves
others say the climate change
will send us all to hell
some people blame the government
they speak of genocide
there's some that don't say anything
they just want to hide
even strong men fall apart
they break down and cry
mother mary pray for us
the long black line

every single minute
every single day
you wonder are you doin' right
you wonder should i stay
'cuz everything is broken
all the lines are down
confusion walks down every street
there's rumors all around
the media is black and white
politicians whine
everything is broken
except the long black line

the long black line
the long black line
the long black line
the long black line

god help the lower nine
the long black line

Audio sample here...

Health clinic helps keep NOLA music alive. More about the New Orleans Musician's Clinic here...

Here's Spencer Bohren's rendition of "Wade In The Water":

Back, Barely

I hate JFK airport. It's got to be the...oh, why bother to relive yet another hellish encounter with this monument to corporate, bureaucratic, and design inefficiency? At least our plane was only an hour late leaving...

We arrived in mostly on piece, sans a suitcase that was delivered this morning. I slept until noon and want to go back to bed. It is awfully nice outside, or so Premium T. keeps assuring me. The restaining and refurbishing of our deck was completed while we were gone -- rotten boards replaced, remaining boards sanded, all boards restained, nails leveled. You can walk on it bare foot. Looks great...

On the flight back, I read Dermot Bolger's The Family On Paradise Pier,  a fascinating fictional account of the life and times of the Anglo-Protestant Goold Verschoyle family, whose idyllic life in Donegal becomes shattered by World War I, the Irish revolution and Civil War, as well as long-simmering sibling rivalry and family guilt about its relative wealth amidst poverty. Two of the three brothers turn to Communism while their sister -- the sheltered, romantic Eva -- learns to accommodate the realities and compromises of life without surrendering herself to them. Events take the family from rural Ireland to Dublin to London to the Spanish Civil War to Moscow and to Stalin's gulags. 

Threaded throughout is the antagonistic relationship of the Irish Catholic Church to the Stalinist radicals who sought to elevate Ireland's poor. Bolger shows how the Church's deeper understanding of the fears and traditions of the Irish people easily triumphed over Stalinist ideology even in the face of economic devastation. Compulsively readable -- I devoured most of it in one sitting -- it's one of the most insightful novels about class and the personal relationship to it that I've read. Includes cameo appearances by Brendan Behan, his indomitable mother Kathleen, and James Gralton, among others.

And, Family is based on the on an actual family named Goold Verschoyle. Bolger met the character based on Eva over 30 years ago, taped many of their conversations, and waited for them to ferment into a novel. Accomplished and highly recommended. More on the Verschoyles here...

New Orleans writer Julie Smith says that it's the secrets, not the crime, that make the Crescent City a great setting for mystery novels...

Besides sitting around listlessly and reading depressing accounts of racial divides and near bank runs, I've spent the morning trying to wake up to the strains of some new music that arrived in my absence:

• The Band Of Heathens, The Band Of Heathens. Austin band that wears its allegiance to Little Feat proudly. How can you miss when Ray Wylie Hubbard produces and Patty Griffin joins in for three songs?
• The Long Black Line, Spencer Bohren. Slow blues from New Orleans' Bohrens describes the long black line left by Katrina on every home it affected, then goes down from there, introducing a cycle of songs related by "tragedy, disaster, and the hardships of the human condition." Bohren mixes his own material with songs by blues masters of the 20's and 30's to make a strikingly original album unified by its theme and by his spooky Delta blues guitar.
• 504 And Then Some. Assortment of live performances available to WWOZ donors and subscribers, many taken from the Piano Night they sponsor every year as part of Jazz Festival. I was already glad I'd subscribed, but this is the icing on the cake.

Oh, the president says that everything is peachy keen.

Spencer Bohren performs "Wade In The Water":

Blow Winds! Rage, Blow!

Ferocious winds last night, ripping and howling off the bay, colliding brutally with the house. They forced their way through the tiny gaps between window and frame, blowing the curtains in our bedroom even though the windows were closed. T. slept fitfully while the continuous bellowing had an oddly soporific effect on me: I slept like a baby. They had let up some this morning, but have started in again, this time driving a hard rain sideways through the cove. I love it. Of course, a hurricane or flood considerably diminishes the romance of a storm...

We spent yesterday afternoon running errands in the nearby market town of Castlebar, where we filled up the car to the tune of $7.85 a gallon. (1.33 euro per litre only sounds better.) T. needed art supplies for her post cards and I needed special-sized light bulbs that I couldn't find in Westport. To our delight, we discovered that the fiddler Kevin Burke performs there in July. His "Lighthouse Keeper's Waltz" was the bride's processional (as it were) at our wedding in December; we've already emailed a request for him to play it...

Thx to Amy Denio for the photo. Amy stayed at Carrowholly last February...

Charles Black, a key advisor to Johnny Wattles, sez that an attack by terrorists on the United States, would benefit McCain to the detriment of Barack Obama. Naturally, the MSM misses the real point: It falls all over itself trying to figure out whether Black is right or wrong while ignoring the colossal cynicism of the remark. The Republicans know they can't win talking about Iraq, the economy, health care, alternative energy, infrastructure -- in other words, any of the huge issues facing this country that they did nothing about when they had the chance -- so they play fear card. Hang on, it's going to be a bumpy ride...

The Washington Post's Richard Cohen brings McCain milk and cookies before tucking him into bed, here. The thrust of Cohen's argument is that no matter how many times McCain flip-flops or how egregiously he panders, his five years as a POW in North Vietnam trump all and prove that his character is superior to Obama's. He doesn't consider the possibility that McCain has sold out his legacy and will say anything to become president, gambling that the punditocracy will never call him on it. If Cohen is a representative sample, it might be a good bet...

For a nuanced, thoughtful, and perspicacious analysis of the public view of Iraq, you can't beat Frank Rich's column here. Rich argues that it no longer matters what incremental "good" news may come come out of Iraq -- that the public has already made up its mind that the war was a mistake and that nothing can change that. The issue now is to get out so that we can focus on the economy, health care, alternative energy, and infrastructure. Rich believes that McCain's platform of holding on in Iraq amounts to the flogging of a dead horse...

New Orleans: Screwed again. But the music, oh, the sweet music...New Orleans blues guitarist Spencer Bohren: "Music is a quintessential part of the fabric in the life and culture of New Orleans, and vice versa. Musicians were among the first to return to the bewildering mess that was New Orleans following the storm, and though there were very few places for them to play, and very few people to hear them, they provided an early signal that the precious spirit of New Orleans was not dead." Be sure to listen to "The Long Black Line"...

It's no picnic in the Midwest, either...

The pot calls the kettle very, very, very, very, very black. We're talking pitch-black, ebony, midnight, center-of-Carlsbad-Caverns-without-a-match-here: The Rev. James Dobson of Focus on the Family accuses former Constitutional law professor Barack Obama of a "fruitcake" interpretation of the Constitution and, worse, of "...distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology..." Focus on the Family supports the teaching of so-called "Intelligent" Design, opposes same-sex couples benefits, opposes meaningful stem cell research, opposes a woman's right to choose, opposes...you get the picture. They do support abstinence before marriage.

I just stepped out into the wind. Wow! It must be 35-40 mph. Best have some tea.